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Attitudes toward seafood as a meat item were examined by sampling 675 households in three Texas cities: Austin, Corpus Christi, and Waco. This report is divided into three sections. The first section describes consumer consumption patterns and attempts to explain these patterns in terms of consumer's attitudes and perceptions toward seafood. Eight separate areas are analyzed: 1. Finfish and shellfish consumption patterns compared to other meat items 2. Consumption patterns of seafood in general 3. Social acceptance of seafood 4. Purchase patterns of seafood 5. Preparation patterns of seafood 6. Seafood product-form preference 7. Awareness of selected seafood species 8. Consumer perceptions of high-volume users of seafood The findings suggest that although consumers do not consume seafood in quantities comparable to red meats and poultry they do perceive it as a nutritious and relatively economical meat item. They reported that they could easily find stores which handle fresh or frozen seafood. The major impediment to the purchase of seafood was the consumers' negative reactions to preparation and purchase. The second section reports on the findings of a behavioral model developed to explain consumption patterns. The model supports the generalizations inferred in the first section; that is, preparation ease and family tastes are determinant attitudes in seafood consumption and have a dampening effect on consumption frequency.The final section analyzes seafood consumption patterns based on a variety of socioeconomic attributes. Three major observations emerge. First, people living near the coast when growing up consume seafood in the home more frequently in later life. Second, as one moves up the social class ladder his frequency of consumption of seafood also increases. Third, there is no discernible market segment for finfish (except coastal proximity). Seafood demonstrates heterogeneous segmentation characteristics.

[Marybeth Bauer, ed.]. : "The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provided leadership and coordination for the development of this multi-agency report. The NCCOS Center for ...

Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium. National Sea Grant Program (U.S.). University of South Alabama, College of Arts and Sciences,.

Published:

1988

Description:

"These are the papers presented at a conference entitled Marine Resource Utilization: Social Science Issues. The purpose of the conference was to bring together individuals who shared a common area of research, the utilization of marine resources; fr...

"This annotated bibliography was initially developed from literature related to the economics and biology of the Gulf of Mexico and south Atlantic shrimp fisheries. In the process of assembling this information, it became apparent that much of the re...